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One of the many reasons onerous discretionary land-development systems are bad is the giant opportunities & incentives for corruption. Some other comments have

by gojomo 3y ago

One of the many reasons onerous discretionary land-development systems are bad is the giant opportunities & incentives for corruption. Some other comments have raised the question: if you're stuck in a corrupt system, should the payers of bribes to government officials be punished as harshly as public officials who take them? Or even punished at all? A way to square this circle without having open-season for payer-initiated corruption would be to allow blanket amnesty for bribes that are preemptively reported, whistleblower-style to an anticorruption agency or mechanism. That is, before delivering any money-for-favors, you pre-register (with a person or trustworthy system) your confession/testimony against the recipient, in a manner to be revealed automatically for prosecution at an appropriate time. Further, the payer could be given a default hard-to-reverse presumption of keeping any such purchased approvals, if-and-only-if the bribe-taker is punished/removed-from-office, and further the payer should be given first priority in recovering the bribe funds. Then, the incentive flips for everyone under pressure to pay bribes to instead become skillful 'sting' operatives against corrupt officials. Similar ideas have been suggested by prominent economists, including India's chief economic advisor 2009-2012 Kaushik Basu, before: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/reduce-bribery-make-it-legal.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/re...

deleted 3y ago
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akira2501 3y ago
> should the payers of bribes to government officials be punished as harshly as public officials who take them? It depends. If the bribe is coerced through threats of violence? That should be seen as an extenuating cirumstance. If there are no such circumstances, then yes, they should absolutely be punished just as harshly. They had an opportunity to report the behavior and they passed on that to benefit themselves at the expense of others. > Then, the incentive flips for everyone under pressure to pay bribes to instead become skillful 'sting' operatives against corrupt officials. That's all very interesting. How about instead, we just hire law enforcement with specific skills in combating these crimes, and then let them work on it?
- gojomo 3y ago
  > They had an opportunity to report the behavior and they passed on that to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Under the systems proposed, their amnesty depends on their cooperation with prosecution. (Under the specifics I described, they must pre-register their reporting before paying anything.) > How about instead, we just hire law enforcement with specific skills in combating these crimes, and then let them work on it? Because that is essentially the current system, which will result in the current results. Just expanding the current approach still leaves both sides of the problem with their incentives to both continue the corruption for mutual, & cooperate in covering-it-up against investigation. Thus, even an extra dollar spent on that enforcement regime that has to fight both payers & recipients, and will be less effective at catching bad actors – and even more importantly, deterring future acts! – than that same extra dollar if the bribe-payers have been turned to assist enforcement.

by gojomo 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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akira2501 3y ago

> should the payers of bribes to government officials be punished as harshly as public officials who take them? It depends. If the bribe is coerced through threats of violence? That should be seen as an extenuating cirumstance. If there are no such circumstances, then yes, they should absolutely be punished just as harshly. They had an opportunity to report the behavior and they passed on that to benefit themselves at the expense of others. > Then, the incentive flips for everyone under pressure to pay bribes to instead become skillful 'sting' operatives against corrupt officials. That's all very interesting. How about instead, we just hire law enforcement with specific skills in combating these crimes, and then let them work on it?

gojomo 3y ago
> They had an opportunity to report the behavior and they passed on that to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Under the systems proposed, their amnesty depends on their cooperation with prosecution. (Under the specifics I described, they must pre-register their reporting before paying anything.) > How about instead, we just hire law enforcement with specific skills in combating these crimes, and then let them work on it? Because that is essentially the current system, which will result in the current results. Just expanding the current approach still leaves both sides of the problem with their incentives to both continue the corruption for mutual, & cooperate in covering-it-up against investigation. Thus, even an extra dollar spent on that enforcement regime that has to fight both payers & recipients, and will be less effective at catching bad actors – and even more importantly, deterring future acts! – than that same extra dollar if the bribe-payers have been turned to assist enforcement.